


The Waking Up Is the Hardest Part

by jivvin



Category: Alan Wake (Video Game)
Genre: Anderson brothers and Sarah make a brief appearance, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Grief, Moving On, no fix-its we suffer like men, not quite Canon Compliant since Control:AWE but still mostly holds up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jivvin/pseuds/jivvin
Summary: Weeks passed since Alan's disappearance, then months, then years. Plagued with nightmares and weird, eerie dreams, the people he left behind struggle to come to terms and move on. Life doesn't wait for anyone.
Relationships: Alan Wake & Barry Wheeler, Alan Wake/Alice Wake
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	The Waking Up Is the Hardest Part

**Author's Note:**

> Well, Control has graciously let us all know that Alan IS still stuck in the Dark Place 10 years after his disappearance, so fuck me I guess :/

_When you’re dreaming with a broken heart,_

_The waking up is the hardest part._

John Mayer, “Dreaming with a Broken Heart”

Alice wakes up on a broken path, cold, wet and alone.

“Alan! Alan!” she calls, but there’s no answer.

There’s no cabin. No car.

No Alan.

Shaking in the freezing morning air, she stumbles to a road and catches a passing hunter's car straight to the Bright Falls police station. So many people are out in the streets - it’s some sort of parade, but wasn’t it supposed to be two weeks from now? The sheriff’s not in for some reason, and the deputy’s not making any sense, telling her about some sort of attack, and the calls, and it _is_ two weeks after Alan and her have arrived, she’s been _missing_ for two weeks, they’ve been searching all over, while Alan’s lost his mind, got the FBI after him, and now he’s gone too, and nothing _makes sense_ , and she breaks down then and there, dropping on the dusty old couch, out like a light.

She dreams of Alan. He’s standing on the edge of a cliff, about to jump into the vast black lake beneath him. She yells at him to stop, but he can’t hear her. Blood drips from a wound on his temple, and a soft smile plays on his lips. Just as her throat gets hoarse with yelling, he looks her straight in the eye, and jumps.

She awakens with a scream. The sky is red with sunset, and she’s in a hospital bed. The sheriff’s there, and some doctors, and… Barry? They assault her with question after question, but she doesn’t remember anything, doesn’t care about anything but finding Alan and holding him close, because he’s in danger, she knows he is, knows so because… She doesn’t know why actually, but it’s not important, it makes no difference, _why can’t anyone tell her where Alan is?_

* * *

Alan is missing. They tell her she was missing too, for almost two whole weeks, and that Alan went to find her, and that he did. But then where is he? She demands a thorough search of the woods, but the sheriff’s extremely reluctant to agree. The woman says there’s not enough men for that, as there’s been a slew of disappearances in the area lately - campers, hunters, loggers, and even police officers. Alice insists, pushing with frantic desperation, but she sees it in the sheriff’s eyes: there’s more to her reluctance than a lack of resources, there’s something… deeper. Something sadder. What’s even more surprising, she sees it in Barry’s eyes too, and that makes her pause.

But only for a moment, before she takes a deep breath, and makes another official request for a search.

* * *

He’s never found. Not that day, nor a week later, nor a month. She hears some bizarre stories about him around town, but nothing concrete. Barry refuses to tell her anything besides what he’s already told her: she disappeared the day they moved into the cabin, Alan went looking for her, and if she’s here it means he’d found her. He has a far-off, haunted look in his eyes when he says it, and loses his temper quickly if she tries to press for anything more.

Most of her dreams are troubled and dark, a mess of swirling shadows that are forgotten as soon as she wakes up, leaving nothing but a memory of terror in their wake. But others are different. Sometimes, she finds herself in the Bird Leg cabin, or in their New York apartment, or even in a vast sunlit field, and there is always a table in the center of her view, and a typewriter, and Alan is there too, typing away with a single-minded focus. The stack of typewritten pages beside him grows, but his face never changes: glassed-over eyes look ahead without seeing, lips move slightly, as if mouthing some words she can never quite hear.

She calls out to him, but he never notices. She wakes up crying, far more disturbed than after a nightmare.

* * *

Barry doesn’t know what to think or who to blame. He _wants_ to blame Alice. After all, none of this would’ve happened if not for-- No, that’s not right. Alan wouldn’t have wanted that. Alan wouldn’t have allowed that. Alan sacrificed himself to free Alice.

And Barry let him.

He drinks more than he used to now. More than he should. But he has no wife to nag him about it, so it’s fine. Alan would’ve understood.

He passes out on the couch, the bottle slipping from his hand and rolling under the coffee table, softly clinking against a couple others that are already gathering dust there. Across from him, on the living room wall, a set of fairy lights he’s got from the Bright Falls general store shines on, like a wreath of red and blue stars. His sleep is uneasy and fitful at first, but then he sinks deeper, loud snores filling the room.

In the dream, they’re running through the woods, engulfed in shifting shadows and dark mist. There’s a cold weight of a hunting rifle in his hands, which is wrong - he can’t shoot, and there’s no ammo to boot. There’s another thing wrong too - Alan’s running slower than him, out of breath and shaking in the black coldness of the night. But still they run, until Alan stumbles over something, and falls to his knees.

“I can’t, Barry,” he rasps, struggling to sit up against a nearby pine. “I can’t go on. It’s too dark.”

“You have to keep running!” Barry pleads, sitting down next to him. “There’s plenty of light where we’re going, but you gotta get up and run again! Come on, Al!”

Alan shakes his head. “It’s over. I can’t get out. I can never--”

Just as Alan’s saying it, Barry feels a shift in the night air, hears a rustling in the underbrush, and turns around just in time to see a Taken, covered in darkness, a huge sickle raised over his head. There’s no time to react, no time to do anything but stare at the dark blade falling on him as if in slow motion. No time for _him_ , anyway, because a second before the killing blow should’ve landed on him, he feels his friend push him aside, tearing the gun from his hands at the same time.

A sickening wet sound pierces the silence, and then a flash of white hot light bursts out of the empty barrel of the rifle, incinerating the Taken on the spot. The wind carries away the fading sparks, and all Barry can do is stare at Alan, frozen in the spot he occupied but a moment ago.

“It’s… over… Barry,” he mutters, and looks up at his friend. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, and Barry follows the drops to where they fall on the handle of the rusty sickle, its blade lodged deep in Alan’s stomach.

He doesn’t waste a second on trying to speak, rushes to Alan’s side, gently lowering him on the ground. He knows he can’t remove the blade, can’t bandage the wound, can’t move him anywhere safe, but also that he can’t just sit there and watch his best friend die. Anger and helplessness swell in him, choking the air out of his throat and tears out of his eyes. He wakes up with his cheeks wet and his hands trembling, but sleep claims him again soon enough. It’s a long, dark night.

* * *

After everything settles down, Barry and Alice don’t really talk to each other except on business-related matters. The chasm that fell naturally between them due to the differences in their personalities and outlooks was only ever bridged by Alan, and with him gone, they are nothing more than two strangers, passing each other in the dark.

But the nightmares persist for both of them.

Night after night, Alice finds herself wading through darkness, blind and deaf, perceiving only the viscous icy tendrils slithering up her legs. But then she sees it - a tiny pinprick of light at the edge of her vision, a single guiding star, and she rushes towards it, wallowing in the pitch black bog, sinking deeper with every step. Still, she presses on, the darkness tearing at her from all sides, terror eating her up from within, and the light - oh miracle - seems to run towards her too, until it gets close enough to tell it for what it is - a thin beam of a flashlight.

“Alice!” she hears Alan yell as he struggles to close the distance between them. “No! Get out! Leave now, you can’t let it get to you again!”

“Alan! Alan, come with me!” she replies, and doubles her efforts to reach him. The dark tendrils coil tighter and tighter around him, covering him up to the neck, and the panic that swells in his eyes is a vicious stab to her heart. Then the darkness devours his face too, and his scream comes out muffled and weak, but in a last-ditch effort he contorts his body towards hers, blindly pushing his flashlight into her outstretched hand.

She grasps it, immediately pointing it at Alan, willing it to burn off the dark, but it’s too late. Spasming and screaming, Alan is swallowed completely, and the flashlight explodes in her hands, searing the black hell around her in a pure white flash, waking her up.

And across the city, Barry Wheeler is tossing and turning, running through a midnight forest again, away from some unnameable horror. Alan is running beside him, the only constant, the other aspects of the dream always shifting and changing.

Sometimes Alan is killed by a Taken enemy straight away, sometimes - after a prolonged chase, and other times it is Barry who gets attacked and dragged off into the night. But the worst ones are the ones in which the Taken never get to them - instead, it’s the darkness itself that envelops them, seeping out of the trees and the ground, biting and clawing at them, tipping them over and invading them, ravaging their bodies and minds. He’s quick to wake up from those ones, but Alan’s screams of pain and terror continue to ring in his ears long after he leaves the bed.

Barry and Alice never talk about that. It’s not something to discuss over the phone or an email, and they don’t meet up in person that often. With each day, the chasm grows.

* * *

Barry’s only joking when he talks to Alan about representing the Anderson brothers, back on their farm. He’s doing it for the same reason he drags that stupid standee around, and makes that silly impression, and brings the weird-smelling moonshine: he knows that Alan’s at the end of his rope, coiled on himself so tightly that the slightest breeze can make him snap.

But as the months after Bright Falls fly by, he gets more and more convinced that the passing joke had a stroke of genius to it. It doesn’t take much to convince the brothers to get on the road again, and the work keeps him occupied enough. They’re a hit, and he enjoys the producing aspect of it all, but even more than that, he finds himself enjoying the brothers’ company. Not only because they’re eccentric and vibrant and brimming with some wild, untamed power, but also because they’re one of the last, the only links he has to that cursed week in the Washington mountains, to the lingering effects of the Darkness, to Alan.

“Tom came to me in a dream last night,” Odin croaks all of a sudden, pushing a fried egg around on his plate. “Always good to see ol’ Tom, eh?”

Warm sunlight fills the busy diner in the middle of the Arizona desert, and flashes off the small metal hammer that Tor doesn’t let go of even during breakfast. “Came to me too,” he grumbles. “Booming around in that stupid suit of his, going on about some nonsense. That young one was there too. And Tom was--”

“Wait, what was that about the young one?” Barry asks quickly, his coffee forgotten, stilled halfway to his lips. “Do you mean Alan?”

“Yeah,” Tor nods, gripping the hammer even tighter. “Young Tom, I see him sometimes. But I was--”

“What did you see?” Barry presses, unsure why the old rocker’s dreams suddenly matter to him so much, but unable to shake off the feeling that they definitely do. “How... How’s Al?”

Tor just scowls at him in silence.

“He’s not good, son,” Odin says instead. “Dark, covered in darkness. Tom’s got his suit and it protects him, see? Keeps the light in, so the hag can’t get to him. But that boy’s all but naked in there...”

“Leather patches on the elbows,” Tor grumbles, shaking his head. “Not metal at all...”

The brothers return to their breakfast, but Barry puts his cup down, his appetite gone. He turns to the newspaper, trying to lose himself in the news, but the rustling of the pages brings back the sound of the dozens of ravens screeching and flapping their wings, throwing themselves in droves against the walls and the windows of a cabin, trying desperately to get inside.

Does Alan hear them still?

* * *

The nightmares get easier with time. At first they come every other day, then every other week, and then a whole month passes without either Alice or Barry having a single night terror.

Neither of them is sure what to make of it, whether it’s a good or a bad sign, whether they should be relieved or worried, but the fact remains: the dreams are slowly subsiding, and with them, their link to Alan seems to be weakening. Would they once stop altogether? What would that mean for them? For Alan?

There’s no-one to turn to for answers. As ever, all they can do is wait - and hope for the best.

* * *

It strikes Alice one day that she can’t remember his smile.

There’s the handsome face, the grayish-blue eyes, the lovely lips, but when it comes to the smile, her mind draws a blank. The realization shakes her, and she can’t wait ‘til evening to rush out of the studio and to (their) her apartment, to rummage through the old photos and any other keepsakes she can get her hands on.

She finds the marketing shots first, but tosses them aside - he’s never smiling in those, serious and striking, just like his books. The press shots are of no use either - it’s not genuine, it’s not _him_. Alan never really liked having his pictures taken, and it takes her some more time to finally locate an old photo album, but most of the photos are of picturesque landscapes, of their friends, of her. Her hands start to tremble with desperation, tears welling up in her eyes, but then she turns the page - and there it is. 

She’s caught him by surprise. His brows are drawn in confusion, but his eyes are soft and warm, and there’s a small, adorable smile on his lips. How could she have forgotten? It’s as if a string snaps somewhere deep in her soul, and she laughs, even as hot tears flow down her cheeks, and a sudden realization pierces her mind with terrifying clarity.

 _He’s dead_.

It’s the first time she’s really allowed herself that thought, and her immediate reaction is denial.

But the seed is sown.

That night he appears in her dream. Rugged and pale, with deep shadows under his eyes, but just as precious as the day they met. He steps closer to her, sad but smiling, and raises a hand to caress her cheek. She leans in, but the moment before his skin touches hers, a dark ripple courses through his form, and he collapses into ash, carried away by the wind.

Only the ghost of a smile remains to haunt her.

* * *

This dream is somehow worse than all others: in this one, Barry and Alan are fighting each other in some gray, faded out place, and it’s a fight to the death. Barry’s yelling out horrible things and swinging at Alan with an axe, and Alan’s face is set in stone as he levels the rifle at his best friend’s heart. It’s a blur of motion and shadow, and just as the shot rings out, the scenery changes to that of a darkened wooden cabin. Barry’s never really been there, but he’s sure it’s the Bird Leg cabin, Alan’s prison in the Dark Place.

The man himself is pacing unsteadily from wall to wall, numerous typewritten pages rustling under his feet. Barry picks one up and tries to read it, but all the words are smudged or scratched out beyond recognition.

“Where am I? Why is this happening to me? It’s too dark,” Alan mumbles, both hands pressing at his temples as he stumbles about the small study. His face is white and wild, and his voice comes out as a fevered plea. “I can’t find my way. Too dark! Why is this happening to me?”

“Al?” Barry steps closer, one hand outstretched to touch the other man’s shoulder.

Alan’s eyes widen at the contact, and as if a current ran through him, he swivels to Barry’s side and clutches both of his forearms in a vice grip. Barry realizes it should hurt, but all he could feel is the weight of Alan’s stare: despite being trained straight at him, his eyes are unfocused and glossy, unnaturally dark.

“Why? Why? Why?” Alan yells, desperation rising with each word. “I can’t make it stop!”

“Al, don’t give up!” Barry tries, the unbridled hysteria in his friend’s tone scaring him more than the Dark Presence ever did. “You have to fight it!”

“What good is it going to do?” Alan goes on, his voice starting to rasp under strain. “ _Why has everyone abandoned me to die here?!_ ”

Barry jolts awake at that, heart pounding wildly, ears ringing, cold sweat on his brow. He jumps from the bed and turns on every light in the apartment.

He doesn’t go back to sleep. He doesn’t dare drink, doesn’t want to pass out.

He sits alone, in the light, and cries.

* * *

Barry keeps in touch with Sarah Breaker, even comes back to Bright Falls once, ostensibly to check up on Rose, but really… He doesn’t really know why. He hasn’t been touched by the Dark Presence, but the place is always at the back of his mind.

He stands on the cliff overlooking the lake and stares down into the murky waters. The feds’ divers have searched it top to bottom, and found no trace of a body. But if Alan’s not here, where is he? Is he safe? Can he get out?

Sarah says that the feds - some weird-ass federal bureau he’s never heard of before, no doubt to do with the local secret society - put up a monitoring station on the lake, and that if there’s any developments in the vicinity she’d be the first to know. That’s somewhat reassuring - at least Alan won’t be completely alone if he ever manages to resurface.

 _When_ , he corrects himself. _When_ he manages.

But the words sound hollow even to him. It’s been two years already. Two years with no word, no change, nothing to indicate that Alan’s even still alive.

Nothing but dreams.

* * *

The sun is rising over the mountains, bathing the desert in warm golden glow. Thin, wispy clouds float lazily across the pink sky, the tops of the trees ablaze with first morning light.

Alan kisses her, slowly and tenderly, as if she’s a delicate treasure, an ephemeral mirage that could dissolve with any breath. His lips are so soft and his touch so gentle, and she wishes she could stay like this forever.

But he’s the one who’s ethereal here, and a deep ache pierces Alice’s heart each time he smiles at her, caresses her hair, says her name. She knows it’s not real, and it won’t last. As she takes a small step back, she sees storm clouds and shadows already begin to swirl around him, the sky darkening to cold, vast blackness.

The ringing of the phone jerks her out of the dream, and she’s glad she wouldn’t be there for the ending. Wouldn’t see Alan completely swallowed up by the black presence, like so many times before.

Still, the heartache stays with her, gnaws at her, keeps her awake. It’s not as overwhelming as before, a fraction quieter each day she gets up, goes to work and comes back home - alone. But it’s still there, and perhaps it will never go away completely.

She’s not sure she wants it to, but at the same time… She curls in on herself, pressing her palms into her eyes as hard as she can.

She can’t go on like this. Something must be done.

* * *

Alice declares Alan legally dead three years after his disappearance. The first time she calls Barry to tell him of the intention, he hangs up on her, quick to stop the conversation before he says something he’ll regret.

But deep down he knows she’s right, and the thought tortures him well into the night, its serrated claws sinking deep into his heart.

He dreams of the misty forest again, like countless times before it, only this time he’s running through it completely alone. Fir needles crunch under his feet, pointy branches tear at his face and clothes, ravens screech somewhere in the blackened tops of the trees.

He runs into a small clearing and stops, exhausted, leaning on his knees for support. Just a minute or two, to catch his breath, and then he’d be off again. He has to find Alan, lost somewhere in all that darkness, find him and bring him home.

But then a twig snaps somewhere nearby, and he hears a voice - human, but warped, unnatural, like a damaged recording.

"Logging is a hazardous occupation!"

His legs take off on their own, adrenaline spiking and spurring him onwards, as far away from the Taken as possible. He has no light, no gun, no weapons to fight them with, so he flees, darting between the trees and the rocks, not daring to look back. Where is Alan? Alan’s a fighter, always has been, even when they were kids. For all of his literary prowess, he always threw words out the window during a confrontation, preferring to throw in his fists instead, leaving Barry to smooth things over afterwards.

But Barry doesn’t mind. He always forgave Alan for his outbursts and his ravings, and he would do it all over again if only he can find the man. Where is he? It’s too dark. The trees stretch out into the starless abyss overhead, the ground smolders with mist, and the only things to pierce the oppressive silence are the far off croaks of the ravens, and the much closer voices of his pursuers.

"Hunters need hunting licenses!"

"Do you understand these rights?"

But his energy is running thin, he can only evade the creatures for so long before he collapses, burned out, on the forest floor, to be consumed by the darkness. And he absolutely can’t allow that to happen before he finds his friend.

So he abandons all caution and shouts into the wind with all the breath he can muster.

“Al! Al, where are you? Aaaal!”

No answer. He keeps on running, legs weakening with every step, lungs burning, but he can’t afford to stop now. His friend is waiting for him somewhere in this darkness, has been waiting for so long now, and Barry could never--

 _Clang!_ Sharp and bright, sparks fly out as an axe strikes a rock mere inches from his head. All thoughts are gone from his mind, replaced by animal panic as he turns around and sees two Taken men advance at him through the swirling shadows. The axe reforms in the hands of one of them, raised for a strike, just as another readies a large hunting knife. Barry’s knees buckle, his strength spent, and it’s all he can do to watch the two figures approach in deafening silence.

Yet just as they come within a swing’s distance from him, the air of the forest shifts. A ripple goes through the darkness, then another, and his attackers pause… and take a step back.

Barry twists his head this way and that, trying to gauge the reason for the sudden change, but can spot nothing in the darkness. The Taken continue to retreat, still facing him, until the night swallows them completely, dissolving their already unstable forms. For a moment, the silence is soft and welcoming.

Then he hears it.

It comes from behind him - the rustling of the underbrush, the subtle crunch of fallen leaves and needles, and then the voice, distorted and wrong, but still so achingly familiar it sends a chill down to Barry’s very soul.

“It's true what they say about the fall and the sudden stop at the end.”

The man steps into view, or maybe forms straight out of the darkened mist, and all Barry wants to do is scream. That stance, that presence, that ridiculous fucking jacket - it’s all there except for the face, blackened and unreadable, possessed by the dark. Taken.

“Al?” Barry forces out, a pathetic little whimper of a question.

The man doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. Instead, he comes closer, and Barry doesn’t even try to run.

“I can see them now, my wife and my baby. Honey, I'm home,” Alan drones in that eerie warped tone, the lines from The Sudden Stop feeling strangely appropriate in this macabre scene. An axe materializes in his hands.

“Jesus, Al, what happened to you?” Barry sobs, all fear forgotten, replaced by pure pain. “Please… come back.”

The other man doesn’t say anything, his empty face and his weapon both trained on Barry. A single strike would be enough now, maybe even less than that - Barry’s ready to die on the spot, if only to wipe the image of his best friend, ravaged by Darkness and despair, out of his mind forever.

“Please come back,” he says again, barely above a whisper. “Al, I’m begging you...”

Alan pauses. The shadows fan and coil around him, deep and malevolent, like a cloud of ink in the water. They suck out all life, all light and all warmth from the air around him, making the already chilly night positively freezing.

And then he raises his hand. Slowly, unsurely, so unlike the quick and precise motions of the Taken, he outstretches it towards Barry, and there’s darkness crawling all over his skin, but also a fine tremble in his fingers. Barry chokes back another sob, and reaches towards Alan with his own hand.

“Please, Al,” he manages to say right before touching him, and then a flash of pain pierces his body, just as a brilliant flash of light blinds his eyes.

He’s awake. Warm morning light shines softly through the blinds, lying on his bed in thin bright streaks. Piercing the darkness.

He sits on the bed for a while still, until the light becomes clearer and colder, and the bustling of the city outside finally pushes him to start his day. In the living room, he notices that the plug of the fairy lights has somehow come out of the socket, and puts it back in. Then he forces all thoughts of Alan, and Alice, and her decision out of his mind, concentrating on putting one foot in front of another and simply doing his damn job.

Still, in the quiet moments between calls, clients and impending catastrophes, he finds himself closing his eyes as tight as he can, searching for something in the darkness.

“Please, Al,” he mutters to himself. “Please come back.”

* * *

Alice still catches his face in the crowds sometimes. A shock of dark hair, a flash of blue eyes, a blink-and-you-miss-it revelation of familiar features. But it’s rare now, very rare, as are the dreams. Most of them are blurry, hard to remember, but still tinged with sadness.

She misses him. Not every day now, for it’s been years already, but from time to time a click-clack of a keyboard, or a whiff of pine-scented cologne, or some other tiny little thing would remind her of Alan and have her pause. The events of those lost two weeks in Bright Falls never resurface, even after months of therapy, and a part of her is glad that they don’t, but another, deeper part yearns for those scattered moments. Her last memory of Alan is him storming out of the cabin, angry and frustrated, leaving her alone when… when something bad had happened to her.

She doesn’t blame him, of course, she knows him better than that, knows he loved her with all his heart. Still, she would gladly exchange that last scene for something… lighter.

The day she goes on her first date after Alan she feels restless, unsure, unexplainably guilty. She’s afraid he will appear in her dreams again, dark and distant, judging.

She does see him that night. They’re in that godforsaken cabin again, but Alan’s wearing a black suit for some reason, the one from the promo shoot for The Sudden Stop. They talk about some nonsense, and laugh, and don’t notice how the day behind the windows turns to night.

Then Alan’s smile drops mid-sentence, and he looks at her with a strange, eerie expression.

“I’m sorry, Alice,” he says.

“What for?”

He looks away. “It’s too dark in here. So dark I can barely think. I want to keep seeing you, but...”

“I miss you, Alan,” she says. “It’s been so long...”

He smiles then, but it’s a flaky, wan little thing that vanishes almost as soon as it appears.

“I’ll never forget you,” he whispers, and the ominous finality of those words chills her to the bone. She wakes up confused and melancholy, but the details of the dream start to fade as soon as she opens her eyes. She’s sure something has changed in a profound way, but the substance of the change itself eludes her, like morning mist melting under the rays of the sun.

She still glimpses his image in the mirrors from time to time. Still catches the sound of his laugh in the wind. But when she gets a call from her date, asking her out again next week, she agrees without reservations.

* * *

Barry buries the Old Gods in Bright Falls. With decades of reckless behaviours, violent tendencies and substance abuse, it’s a miracle they’ve managed to live as long as they did, but it still comes as a blow to Barry.

Another link gone.

Cynthia Weaver died earlier that year, peacefully, in her sleep, in the abandoned power plant she called her home. It was almost a week before her body was found. But the Anderson brothers were public figures now, their passing a matter of public attention. By now, Barry knows them enough to be sure they would’ve wanted to go out with a bang, so he organizes the most metal send-off he could imagine - a rock concert and a rave, fireworks and booze, dancing and fighting from dusk ‘til dawn. Two wooden boats are set ablaze and sent off the pier in the New York bight - a last, late goodbye to the Old Gods of Asgard.

But there are no bodies in the boats. They’re cremated, as per the brothers’ wishes, and the ashes are flown off to Washington, to be scattered from the top of the Mirror Peak. Barry doesn’t want any of the thousands of wild and raving fans anywhere near that place though, so he flies there later, alone. He and Sarah ascend the mountain together and send the ashes of the two old warriors flying on the cold northern wind.

But as they stand there, so close to the sky, the pale winter sun brings Barry no warmth, and there’s no charm in the snowy mountaintops and glittery silver fir-trees. His eyes are - as always when he’s here - fixed on the dark waters of the Cauldron Lake below.

He can’t even bury Alan. There’s no body, no ashes, no grave, no certainty.

No hope. For the first time ever, Barry allows himself a thought he’s barred from taking any hold in his mind before: _Al’s not coming back_. Even if he’s still alive, which is a damn slim chance in and of itself, if there was a way out of the Dark Place, he would have found it by now. If anyone could, it’d no doubt be the stubborn, relentless, uncompromising determination engine that was Alan Wake. But as it is...

He continues to stare into the lake until the sun tips over its zenith, and Sarah puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. He stirs, suddenly feeling the prickling of the icy winds again, and closes his eyes.

“Goodbye,” he says right before turning around and following Sarah down the mountain path.

He expects to dream that night, almost wishes for it, but his sleep remains undisturbed. No-one comes to him in the night to scorn or judge him for his lack of loyalty, or to berate him for a lapse in faith, or simply to stare at him mournfully from across a misty forest.

No-one comes.

He never returns to Bright Falls again.

* * *

It shouldn’t surprise him when Alice announces she’s getting married, but the phone still almost slips out of his suddenly weakened fingers.

It’s been six years. It’s only natural. He should congratulate her, really, but the words feel too heavy and cumbersome in his mouth.

She goes on about something, asking him some questions about some dates and some places, and it takes a whole minute for his brain to break out of freeze mode and understand that she’s inviting him to the wedding.

Well, “inviting” might be a strong word. Mostly just checking up, inquiring about his working schedule, suggesting that if he doesn’t have anything planned for a such-and-such day, in a such-and such venue…

He’s not fooled. She doesn’t want him to be there any more than he does himself. So he declines in a polite way, making up some appointment on the spot, and finally finds it in himself to wish her happiness. She thanks him, brief but heartfelt. There’s no special excitement or barely contained joy of a new bride in her voice, and he’s grateful to her for that. But of course she would understand. Besides him, she’d be the only one who would.

He suddenly wishes they found more common ground over the years. Shouldn’t the tragedy of losing Alan have brought them closer? But no. That ship has already sailed.

It’s been too long. So damn long now.

* * *

They say time heals all wounds. And as old and tired as the adage is, Alice can’t help but recognize its truth.

She would never forget Alan. He holds a special place in her heart. Her memories of him, all the happy, sad, tender moments they shared - are like treasures that she alone knows the way to. In time, the bad memories fade, and the good ones shine ever brighter.

His books stand on her shelf - her husband is a big fan, though he felt very awkward admitting it at first. His old photos are kept safe in the albums in her study - perhaps one day she will be sitting by the fireplace, showing them to her kids.

She and Alan have wanted children, but with one thing or another, they’ve never really gotten around to it. They thought they had all the time in the world, and when Alan went missing, she cursed it all for not trying when they had the chance, for not having that sweet, precious link to the man she loved so dearly and faithfully.

But that regret and that pain, like many others, is now more of a distant, soft thing, like a muffled sound of a radio song playing from another room. It is always there, just a few steps away, and in the rare quiet moments she can make out the sad melody and the melancholy lyrics through the wall. But most of the time, it’s drowned out by the sound of her two little children playing on the carpet in front of her, by the warm smile of her husband, by the golden-pink rays of the sun shining through the windows of her house.

She hasn’t seen a darkness-tinged dream in years now.

She hopes she never will again.

* * *

People who say that time heals all wounds are full of shit. It covers the wound with a layer of scar, dulls its sensitivity, prevents the infection from spreading, but underneath it all - the wound is still there, always there, deep in your flesh, waiting for you to stumble and poke it, open it all over again.

Barry sprawls on his couch, one hectic day of negotiating rights and advances and royalties finally behind him, the next one just nine hours away. He sips the last beer he managed to dig out of the recesses of the fridge and lazily skims through his phone, when his eyes land on the time and date, and a stab of pain jolts through his heart.

September 14th. The date that Alan disappeared on, eight years ago.

The pain has subsided to a dull ache, but it’s not going away any time soon. Barry finishes off the beer in one long swig, and throws the empty can into a corner, nearly missing the old fairy lights twinkling on that wall. His anger dissipates almost as soon as it forms, leaving behind itself nothing but a thick fog of tired helplessness.

He hasn’t been dreaming much at all in the last couple of years, and in a way, the mist-soaked forest he finds himself in once more feels like a homecoming. Alan is running in front of him, lighting the way, and Barry doesn’t even try to fight the urge to reach out and touch his friend. But before he can do that, the scenery swirls and changes, and Barry finds himself walking through a junkyard of some sort on a cold autumn evening, the redding sun hanging low on the horizon.

Alan walks beside him, eyes cast down, hands in the pockets of his worn hoodie. His face is soft and incredibly young, but marred with bruises and stitched gashes, a bit of congealed blood still on his broken lip. He’s drawn in on himself, stiff and limping slightly with every step. He throws a furtive glance at Barry, then turns away again, kicking a crumpled beer can out of the way with his undamaged foot.

Some part of Barry stirs at the image, recognizing it for something more than a dream - it’s a memory, an old, bleak scene from their life.

They’re sixteen, give or take a year, and they’re strolling through the junkyard they frequently visited during that time to get away from the crowds, neither of them being especially popular amongst their peers. Alan, of course, has the looks enough to be socially successful if he chooses to, but his sullen, contrary disposition and his hair-trigger temper close all those doors for him pretty quickly. And Barry… he never stood a chance.

“So, what was it this time?” Barry says amongst the heavy silence, voice dripping with annoyance and mockery. “Did they rag on Stephen King?”

“Fuck off,” Alan grimaces, from pain as much as from irritation.

“Did they go on about you not knowing your old man? You can’t keep rising up to that one every time, you know that, right?” Barry goes on, not mocking anymore, but still plenty annoyed. “You ask me, you got the better deal here,” he adds in a softer tone. “Man, I _wish_ I didn’t know mine.”

Alan frowns, stealing another quick glance at his friend, then shakes his head.

“It wasn’t that. It was... nothing,” he finally says. “It was nothing.”

“Sure doesn’t look like nothing to me,” Barry presses. “Come on, I dragged your beat up ass all the way to the infirmary, I think I deserve to know why you got trashed in the first place.”

“Look, just-- just drop it, okay? It wasn’t anything serious.”

“Al, you had to get _stitches!_ They had to set your nose - again! What the fuck were you thinking, taking it up with those guys?” Barry’s close to shouting, fear and anger at finding Alan in the school’s parking lot, bleeding onto the asphalt, still at the forefront of his mind. “You coulda been killed!”

But Alan’s only ever known to respond to anger with anger, no matter the motivations behind it. “Fuck off, you’re not my dad,” he snaps.

And Barry’s just pissed enough to mutter snidely, “Yeah? How would _you_ know?”

He regrets the words instantly, but it’s an instant too late: Alan’s clear blue eyes widen in shock and rage, and his mangled face contorts into a grimace of hate.

“They called you trailer trash, okay?!” he yells, and it’s the subtle crack in his voice that makes Barry realize that the hate isn’t directed at him. “They said you’re a cockroach, and that people like you are cockroaches too, squabbling in their own filth, so pathetic and worthless that were all of you to disappear tomorrow, nobody would even notice, like you were never there at all! Was I supposed to stand there and take it?” He waves his hands in the air in a fit of emotion, bloodied knuckles dark against pale skin. “I could’ve killed those assholes!”

Barry just stands there, staring, stunned into silence. It’s not the first time it happens - Alan’s quick to throw himself into a fight at a slight provocation, despite rarely coming out on top in a physical scuffle. It mostly happens on his own account - he has enough trouble with being poor, fatherless, and nerdy, but there are plenty of times when he gets himself in over his head purely for Barry’s sake. And it never fails to stun Barry when that happens, mostly because Alan’s the only person in his life to give that much of a damn about him. To give a damn about him at all.

“You can’t go throwing fists every time some jerk says something shitty,” he says quietly, unable to meet his best friend’s burning gaze. “They’re just words.”

When he finally finds the courage to look up again, he finds they’re no longer at the junkyard. They’re in the Bird Leg cabin now, cold dead darkness slithering just outside the creepy circular windows, the stuffed owl staring down at them with its glassy eyes.

Alan has changed too. It’s the Alan that disappeared in Bright Falls on the 14th of September, eight years ago, but not quite. He’s more worn, gaunt and tired than Barry has ever seen him, with deep shadows under his eyes, and a dark, hard air about him.

“Words have power,” he says, and gives Barry a wan, crooked smile. “I’m still trying to find mine, as you see.”

“Oh, Al,” Barry mutters, a swirl of emotions tearing at his heart at the sight of his friend. He’s frozen to the spot, afraid to move and cause the dream to shift again.

“Dreams and radio signals,” Alan goes on. “But I was never really good with… gadgets. I’m sorry.”

“What are you talking about, Al?”

“It’s an ocean, vast and shoreless. You can jump in, but you can’t jump out. The only way is down.”

“I-- I don’t understand.”

Alan frowns, frustrated, but doesn’t stop talking. “I’ll keep trying for as long as I can, but… I keep sinking. Reality, fiction - it’s all the same in the depths. Soon, even dreams won’t cut through.” His face takes on a haunted expression as he looks his friend in the eye. “Barry… this is goodbye.”

“What? No, Al--”

“The tide is rising, Barry!” he shouts then, desperate. “It’s still low now, but it _keeps rising_ , and when it comes it will... Only the light will save you then. You’ll have to turn _all_ the lights on, do you understand?”

Barry’s confusion reaches its limit then, and he takes a step forward despite himself.

“No, I don’t understand! You’ve been gone for years now, I don’t-- I don’t know what to do! Alice has--” He cuts himself off at the very last second, but Alan’s face has already changed - closed off, gaze dropped to the floor.

“She’s moved on,” he says after a pause, in a carefully neutral, hollow tone. Then jerks his head up and focuses on Barry, switching to an accusation in the blink of an eye. “Why haven’t you?”

Barry recoils, as if slapped. “What kind of question is that?”

“No, you’re right, it’s my fault,” Alan nods, starting to pace up and down the small room, once again fully engrossed in something beyond Barry’s understanding. The darkness outside the windows grows heavier, distant rumbling coming from all sides. “I should’ve done like Zane did,” he goes on, “written myself out of reality right away, out of everyone’s memories, out of sight - out of mind, like I was never there at all…”

“Al, what the hell are you talking about?” Barry interrupts then, losing all patience with his stubborn idiot of a friend. In a couple of steps he crosses the distance between them and grabs Alan by the shoulders, shaking him up. “We’re waiting for you there--”

“You shouldn’t.”

“-- _I’m_ waiting, Alice is too, despite-- despite everything, I know she is! And your fans! Thousands of people all over the world, do you know how many letters we got when you were announced missing? We’re all waiting for you to--”

“Don’t!” Alan cries out, pushing Barry away, stepping back until he’s pressed into a wall. There’s a dark cast of misery on his face, but before either he or Barry can say another word, a mighty quake rocks the cabin, almost knocking them both off their feet. Only now does Barry notice that the windows have gone completely black, and that there’s a loud rushing sound coming from the direction of the hallway. His eyes and Alan’s meet for just a moment, and he hears his friend’s last, quiet plea: “Please don’t.”

The sound of it is almost drowned out by a terrible roar of a black wave breaking into the room, tearing the door off its hinges, sweeping them both up, filling the small study in seconds. Its touch is slimy and ice-cold, and there is something inside its waters that immediately coils around Barry’s feet, trying to drag him under. He tries to scream, but no sound comes out, mortal panic filling his mind almost as quickly as the oily water fills his throat. He catches one last glimpse of Alan’s wide open, glistening eyes just as the coiling tentacles pull him into the black depths, and he falls off the couch, panting and sweating, painfully awake.

Slowly, he sits up, with his back to the couch and his eyes tightly shut. The ache in his chest is still there, but now bigger, hungrier, almost physically painful. He’s not dreaming anymore, but the feeling of being transported into another old memory overwhelms him.

He can feel the glare of a hundred blazing light bulbs through his eyelids, sense the heat they generate on his skin, smell the dust of the old concrete bunker, hear Sarah’s pacing and Cynthia Weaver’s mumbling ravings. Just like now, he sits on the floor, with his hands clutching at his head, and just like then, there’s only one thought on his mind, going on and on in a frantic loop.

 _I don't think I'm ever gonna see him again_.

He wakes up again at dawn, having fallen asleep without realizing. His whole body screams at him for having slept in such an uncomfortable position, and his mind is still fuzzy and unfocused, but he pushes past all of that, gets up and goes to take a shower.

He goes to work, spends his day solving other people’s problems, wrangling unruly creatives, making money off of fiction and imagination. In the evening, he makes a call to Alice, ostensibly on a business matter, but really just trying to gauge how she is. She sounds tired, but calm and content, her soft voice set off against the children laughing somewhere in the background. He tries not to sound bitter as he says his goodbyes. He wants to be happy for her, he truly does.

He wants to be happy. He wants to ~~forget~~ move on.

Why hasn’t he?

* * *

Barry doesn’t see any more dreams of Alan. Two years later, as he looks at a calendar on the 14th of September, a dull ache still pulls at his heart, but then slowly recedes. He doesn’t dwell on how that makes him feel, or what it makes him remember. He turns the page and goes on about his day.

Because, whether he wants it or not, life doesn’t stop just because he has lost someone. Seasons still change, bills still need to be paid, and beginner novelists from all across the country still expect him to pull rabbits out of his hat to get their books sold.

(The fairy lights lie in the closet, folded neatly into a box.)

Because life doesn’t slow down just because someone who was always there for you drowns in a lake. Life doesn’t stutter, doesn’t pause, doesn’t take days off to wish for something that can never come true.

Life doesn’t wait for anyone. And eventually, Barry Wheeler stops waiting too.


End file.
